To Stain Red
by WordsfromAshes
Summary: After Karkat creates the grubs with ectobiology, he realizes how horrible of a leader he is, and tries to fix it all by getting rid of the source of all the problems-himself.


What did I do? _What_ did I _do_?

He had found himself in a weird room after storming off in a fit of rage. He knew that much. He knew that he had thrown something at a machine full of buttons, which whirled into life after that. He had tried to shut it off by throwing some punches at it, rather unsuccessfully. And he knew that he now had 24 grubs in front of him. Twenty-four grubs and each had a clone to match it.

Karkat Vantas was beginning to suspect that Gamzee had slipped him some sopor slime in order to "calm him all down and all". This had to be a hallucination. But as he sat on the floor rubbing his head (from tripping over his sickle as he tried to run out of there—the grubs found that humorous), he knew it was real and had to figure out just what he had _done_.

He got up and stared at the grubs, who separated themselves into two groups. The whole hemospectrum seemed to be presented to him in the wriggling forms—even two bright dashes of red.

And the horror finally caught up with him.

He created life. This game had somehow forced him to create the life of the players—including him. And if his think-pan was as rusted as Gamzee's he'd actually believe that he had created supposed "ancestors" too. Pupa Pan had more of a chance to be real than that though. He scoffed at the idea.

Pulling himself up, Karkat watched the grubs wriggling around and frowned. They were never natural. They were never born from the mothergrub. This made him the most unnatural of them all then. And anger soon flared like fire in his veins—fire, the color of a vivid crimson red. And worst of all, the anger wasn't at the Alternian ways or his friends or the pathetic grubs before him.

His anger was directed solely at himself.

It was bad enough when he had believed he had sucked them into this game in the first place. He hadn't listened to Sollux. He let his massive gogdamn ego get in the way. It was worse when he believed that he was the reason that Sollux had died. And then he found out he had killed all of their lusi. He felt like the shittiest troll to have ever breathed life.

But now—now was a different story. He was the ultimate reason for all of their lives. He created them all. And he had started the infinite loop of death and life and set it in motion. He made it so that they were always part of the game.

And he thought he could ever be a leader? Well he was, just not the way he wanted to be. He was going to lead them all to their own demise.

Karkat looked at his hands. They might as well have been drenched in the blood of his friends—in the blood of all the trolls of Alternia—because he was a monster. Worse than Vriska, and that was saying something.

And suddenly, he knew how to solve everything. His hands didn't need to be soaked in the blood of his friends. They just needed to be stained crimson red. If he never got the chance to exist, then the loop would be broken. The pawn would never be able to set it in action.

He looked for his blood-red grub. The grubs had been avoiding him after he flipped the fuck out when they had originally crawled all over him. There was his clone in the one group, but he knew deep down that that grub was not him. And so he left it alone and went to search for his grub-self. His trusty sickles armed and ready.

There was Feferi and Eridan; Tavros and Gamzee; Nepeta and Equius; Kanaya and Vriska; Aradia and Sollux; and Terezi—the poor grubs, completely oblivious to their morbid fates. Karkat couldn't even look at them as he felt like an even bigger fuckass.

And then he saw it. A flash of red sitting all by itself as if waiting to be slaughtered—none of the other grubs were around for they knew it was a freak of nature meant to be killed at the start.

Karkat frowned and clenched the handles to his sickles so tightly that his knuckles became bone white and he was pretty sure his nails punctured his skin. Hesitating at first, he began to move towards the little grub.

Closing his eyes, he raised a sickle. He couldn't stand looking at those wide innocent eyes—he was the least innocent of them all. And just as he was about to bring the sickle down, he heard a familiar cackle and felt his knees buckle under him as something knocked into him.

Karkat cracked his eyes open to find the Terezi-grub had jumped his grub-self and was now crawling over the grub and 'fighting' him, all the while cackling. They momentarily stopped as the Terezi-grub stared up at him with wide eyes and smiled before his grub-self jumped her with a laugh and smile and they went back to playing.

He couldn't. He couldn't kill the happiness that he saw in Terezi-grub's eyes or that happiness that was freely shown in his own grub's face—something that he had grown to mask with anger over the years.

Slowly but surely the sickle was lowered to Karkat's side as he watched the two grubs play in pure joy. Terezi-grub had even licked his grub-self even though that action wouldn't be prominent until after her accident.

And then Karkat sat down and rested his arms over his knees. The sickles fell to his side and clattered to the ground. Soon enough Sollux had joined in along with Gamzee and one by one the other grubs followed to play in the grub pile with his grub-self in the center of it all, surrounded by friends and happiness.

Karkat sat there and watched until one by one, they were launched off back in time to where they would be found by their individual lusus. And he smiled.

As he made his way out, Karkat pulled up Trollian only to be met with concerned messages from his friends. He gave a rare smile. Minimizing the windows temporarily, he left one open.

carcinoGeneticist began trolling gallowsCalibrator at 18:24

CG: THANK YOU

GC: K4RK4T! WH4T H4PP3N3D? W3 W3R3 4LL WORR13D WH3N NO ON3 COULD G3T TO YOU, 4ND FOR WH4T? WH4T 1S GO1NG ON?

CG: FOR SAVING ME.

Karkat knew that this would soon be held over his head by her and she wouldn't stop questioning him until she knew what he meant, but he didn't mind. Because he now realized that no matter how much he fucked up, he would always have his friends, no matter how irritating they may be. And most of all, because without Terezi, he wouldn't be there now, and he would have more than just diluted red tears staining his hands.

* * *

><p>First Homestuck fanfic. The first of many.<p> 


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